Betsy Newmark thinks Kerry has made a mistake “by criticizing Bush for staying for seven minutes to read with the children when he got the news of the planes hitting the towers”.
Kerry’s making an obvious reference to Fahrenheit 9/11, and it’s at least his second tacit endorsement of Michael Moore. But as with much of Moore’s moviemaking, isn’t this a distortion of what actually happened?
When the first plane hit the World Trade Center, many–if not most–people believed it was a horrific accident. It was only when the second plane hit (about forty minutes after the first) that we realized it was a deliberate terrorist attack. (On September 11th, I remember leaving the room after watching the news of the first plane on TV, and my wife shouting for me to come back in when the second plane demonstrated that this was a planned attack, not a terrible accident.)
Given that New York has an enormous number of firefighters, policemen, and other emergency technicians, what does Kerry think the president should be doing to immediately coordinate an emergency response? Dial the NYFD on his own cell phone?
(And of course, had President Bush immediately turned into a combination of Buck Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove mixed with Rambo and immediately started coordinating action, the left would accuse him of jumping the gun and being too jingoistic.)
And this from a guy has missed 88 percent of his Senate votes since beginning his run for the presidency (and unlike Bob Dole and most previous Senators who’ve campaigned for the White House, is continuing to hedge his bets by not resigning).
As Betsy writes, Kerry’s reckless attack on the president has earned the wrath of one guy who was in New York that day: Rudy Giuliani, who’s come out swinging for President Bush, and made the obvious Kerry-Moore connection.
Update: What did Kerry with his Vietnam-honed reflexes and experiences do? Watch it all on TV.
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